In 1989, there were many courageous acts of heroism by US citizens, some of whom received Carnegie hero awards.
Notably, in California, a volunteer firefighter crashed through the ice and drowned trying to save others from drowning in a lake.
An ex-professional baseball player drowned after rescuing two boys from a river in Tennessee.
Also in California, in separate incidents, two sheriff deputies rescued two small children from a burning house; a seventeen-year-old boy knocked down two doors to rescue a mother and her uncle from a home minutes before a fire engulfed it; seven young men rescued a family of six from a burning house filled with smoke; and a man was badly burned rescuing people from two homes struck by two fighter jets.
California also recorded a number of burning car rescues: four men pulled two men from a burning van fifteen seconds before it exploded; a man saved six toddlers from a car one minute before it was engulfed by flames; seven motorists saved the lives of four people trapped in a burning car in a freeway collision; another man rescued a woman pinned down between the passenger seat and door of a burning car.
There were a number of occasions when people risked their lives saving people from assailants: a man was stabbed several times rescuing a youth from a gang; another hero saved a woman from rape by a knife-wielding assailant; a man saved an officer from being strangled by an attacker in a bank.
